The number of ways that Windows shortcut (.LNK) files can be abused just keeps growing: A cybersecurity researcher has documented four new techniques to trick Windows users into running malicious ...

Shortcuts (LNK files) in Windows are indicated by curved arrows. We often treat them as background noise and don't consider what they actually do beyond opening apps. In fact, there is a huge gap ...

Forensic investigators use LNK shortcut files to recover metadata about recently accessed files, including files deleted after the time of access. In a recent investigation, FireEye Mandiant ...

A third-party patch management company is cutting short attackers’ use of LNK files to smuggle in malicious commands, while Microsoft prefers to tell the whole story. A longstanding problem with the ...

Eeek! All versions of Microsoft Windows have a nasty shortcut-file vulnerability, it has emerged. Simply displaying the icon of a crafty .LNK file will cause malware infection. The Stuxnet worm has ...

Microsoft’s November 2025 Patch Tuesday fixed 63 flaws, including CVE-2025-9491 in Windows LNK files The bug let attackers hide malicious commands in shortcut files, enabling RCE attacks Exploited ...

North Korea's APT37 threat group is providing fresh evidence of how adversaries have pivoted to using LNK, or shortcut files, to distribute malicious payloads after Microsoft began blocking macros by ...

I'm the sole Mac user in a Windows-based company, and all of our files are stored in a collection of Windows Server shares in a whole bunch of relatively organized directories. We frequently include ...

If you patched your Windows computers in 2010 against the LNK exploit used by Stuxnet and thought you were safe, researchers from Hewlett-Packard have some bad news for you: Microsoft’s fix was flawed ...

Microsoft has fixed a Windows Smart App Control and SmartScreen flaw that has been exploited in attacks as a zero-day since at least 2018. On vulnerable systems, threat actors have abused the ...